The City Council wants to take a closer look at illegal recreational use of all-terrain vehicles in the city.

Councilor Deborah Carr said she had received calls from constituents complaining about young men and boys on off-road ATVs in the area of Baker Road East, during this week’s council meeting.

Carr said the ATVs, which typically have four wheels and are called quads, have been spotted, and heard, driving near railroad tracks adjacent Fifth Street and Somerset Avenue, especially on weekends.

“It’s constantly all day long,” Carr said, referring to neighbors who say they’ve been enduring the weekend noise.

Carr told the council she’s received reliable reports some quad drivers have been driving into Sunny’s Gas and Convenience on Lawton Avenue, where they gas up in the same manner as cars and trucks.

There have also been reports, she said, that trucks, some with Rhode Island plates, unload the ATVs and park nearby.

Carr said residents tell her police have warned the gas station owner not to allow ATV operators to gas up, which is why he is clearing an adjacent site where the quads can gather.

She said neighbors are concerned the ATV operators simply will fill containers with gas and be allowed to walk to where their recreational vehicles are parked.

Carr and other councilors recounted examples of brazen behavior in which ATV drivers think nothing of speeding up and down busy streets in clear view of police.

It is illegal to drive an ATV on city streets.

A motion was made to refer the matter both to the committee on police and license and police Chief Edward Walsh.

Carr asked if it might be feasible to utilize surveillance cameras to identify the ATV drivers and the pickup trucks dropping them off each weekend.

Taunton has a long history of problems with people driving ATVs and dirt bikes on privately owned and city owned property as well as on streets.

In other news, a letter from a resident of a Broadway rooming house asked the council and Mayor Thomas Hoye Jr. to consider issuing residential parking permits.

Howard Keach, of 72 Broadway, said in his letter there is a paucity of on-street parking for low-income residents like himself who own cars.

Keach said many of them, including himself, are older and/or disabled.

He claims to have spoken with parking commission chairman Ed Valadao as to why the city keeps parking meters up and down the block. Keach says he was told it acts as a deterrent for people visiting the Trial Court who would monopolize on-street spaces instead of using municipal lots.

Page 2 of 2 - Keach enclosed Boston’s resident parking policy, but noted that he instead recommends Taunton residents on Broadway pay a one-time fee for a sticker, as opposed to having certain spots permanently designated as “resident only.”

Keach is not alone in raising the issue of resident parking permits. The owner of an apartment house at 9 Taunton Green recently complained that his former tenants were unable to park overnight within easy walking distance.

Carr made a motion to refer the matter to Chief Walsh, who sits on the parking commission.

Hoye told the council the parking commission is currently being reconfigured.